Teachers Seek Inclusion For Special Ed Kids

Nearly 600 teachers, parents and students showed up at school sporting blue T‑shirts Friday in support for the hundreds of Elm City kids with autism.

The vibrant display grew out of a years-long efforts by a handful of special education teachers to draw attention to the students in their classes.

Six years ago, two teachers at Brennan-Rogers School started fundraising for an autism advocacy organization. Since then, they’ve raised $45,000. This year, they hope to pull together $10,000 — a record they’ve gotten close to but never broken.

The money will go to Autism Services & Resources (ASRC), a Wallingford-based nonprofit that provides training and support for Connecticut children with autism. ASRC hosts an annual walk, which will take place this year on Sunday, May 6. The Elm City Dream Team, a group of New Haven teachers and parents walking together, expects to have a contingent of 150 people participating.

“Every year that we’re able to do it, we’re able to push a message of inclusivity, collaboration and recognition of a significant population across the district,” said Mallory Bogart, the original organizer who now teaches at Lincoln-Bassett. ​“This is not something that’s going away, and it’s not something to shy away from either.”

This school year, almost 3,100 students in New Haven have been placed in special education programs, representing 15 percent of the district.

Within that group, 40 percent have been diagnosed with a specific learning disability like dyslexia or dyscalculia. More than 20 percent have a health impediment like attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. Just over 10 percent of children are autistic.

Autism spectrum disorder is a developmental disability that can encompass a wide range of behaviors. Most often autism is associated with difficulty with social situations, nonverbal communication and repetitive behaviors.

The ultimate goal for New Haven’s special education program is to move kids out of self-contained classrooms into general education programs. In inclusive classrooms, students’ academic performance improves as they see each other as ​“peer models,” Bogart explained.

“If you’re facing a challenge, you’re going to be more motivated by seeing a peer meet that challenge and wanting to be like them, rather than being taken out in a quiet, sterile environment,” Bogart said. ​“It’s not what every student needs at every time, but it’s what we hope to achieve.”

She said that she still often has to explain the differences in autistic students’ behavior. For instance, when a reporter walked into a specialized classroom at Brennan-Rogers on Friday morning, a middle-schooler started flapping her arms. That ​“self-stimulating” behavior might seem disruptive to some educators, Bogart said. But it’s actually a ​“self-soothing technique” to manage new sensory experiences.

“Every behavior has a motivation, and it’s important to try and figure that out,” Bogart said. ​“Because only then can you work to change a behavior or maximize that behavior for student learning. That sometimes can be a puzzle to really dig deep and figure it out. It’s looking at things through different lenses, especially when it comes to behavior.”

Bogart said that she’s been able to spread messages like that on a wider scale by organizing for the walk each April, which is Autism Awareness Month.

Six years ago, she got her start with advocacy at Brennan Rogers, a combined elementary and middle school in West Rock that used to have all the district’s specialized classrooms for autism. The effort went district-wide when one of the specialized classes moved over to Strong School, and Bogart asked other schools to join in their fundraising for ASRC.

This year, the staff at 13 schools and administrators from central office are participating in the walk, doubling the number of volunteers just in the past year. At some schools, staff are buying $10 blue shirts, inscribed with a Helen Keller quote; at others, they’re buying $1 puzzle pieces to decorate the team’s banner.

Bogart said the wide support has allowed them to have a larger conversation about students’ needs.

“In the way education is going — as it should — it’s important that we recognize every student brings something to the table, regardless of what they might see as an identifiable disability or a need. It doesn’t take away from the fact that they’re children who can learn and contribute,” Bogart said. ​“It’s been nice to have that message concretely shown in so many different schools.”

For decades, students with disabilities were excluded from classrooms, judged too disruptive to other students or too expensive to educate alone. A shift finally came in 1975, when President Gerald Ford signed the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA), which established that children with disabilities had a legal right to a ​“free, appropriate public education” in the ​“least restrictive environment.”

Yet, even through the early 1990s, children with disabilities were kept away from other students, Bogart recalled. Those kids were ​“separate,” put down by ​“low expectations,” and ​“not really intermingled with the general population,” she said, as she saw with one of her siblings with a disability.

With more programming for special education these days, schools have become more adaptive to every students’ needs, said Typhanie Jackson, the district’s director of student services.

“We have a variety of students with different needs, whether it’s students that are in specialized programs or those who are in mainstream classrooms. For all of them to be exposed to learning differences is an awesome opportunity,” she said. ​“We feel like it’s a benefit to all students.”